<
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/donald-trump-bonwit-teller-friezes-met-2132673>
"Donald Trump’s relationship to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was permanently
damaged early on. He refused to donate artworks that he had promised to the
museum and instead had them destroyed, along with a venerable building that had
played an important role in American art history.
At that site, the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in Manhattan at
which Trump constructed his prestige project Trump Tower between 1980 and 1982,
the flagship store of the luxury department store chain Bonwit Teller and Co.
had earlier stood. The 1929 building was the work of the same architects who
had designed Grand Central Terminal, Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore. It was
intended originally to house the women’s department store Stewart. Bonwit
Teller, who took over the building in 1930 and opened it anew, soon worked with
world-famous artists. Starting in 1936, the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador
Dalí regularly decorated the windows with spectacular installations, for
example in 1939, working with the theme “night and day.” In the 1950s, Jasper
Johns and Robert Rauschenberg worked for the company on the side as window
dressers, using the pseudonym “Matson Jones.” Among other things, Johns
displayed his now iconic painting
Flag on Orange Field behind a mannequin in
the windows in 1957. That same year in the same place, Rauschenberg showed his
Red Combine Painting along with others. Two years earlier, the large
photographic work
Blue Ceiling Matson Jones could be seen in the background
of the Bonwit Teller windows."
Via Joyce Donahue and Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
